Fogtown

by Peter Plate

One foggy day in San Francisco brings together bloody ghosts, a dandyish thug, capricious cops, a suicidal punk rocker, a hyperliterate slumlord, and a sweet old lady sent by God to hand out cash from a hijacked armored car. In Fogtown, Peter Plate uses a loving hand to carve his characters out of hallucination, perversity, and tenacity. Plate's noir sensibility gives him special fluency with the weary souls of urban America's down and out; Fogtown describes a new age unmistakably built on the twentieth century of Nelson Algren and Charles Bukowski.

Genres: Fiction

168 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2004

About the author

Named a Literary Laureate of San Francisco in 2004, PETER PLATE taught himself to write fiction during eight years spent squatting in abandoned buildings. He is the author of many novels, beginning with Black Wheel of Anger (1990) and continuing through his seven neo-noir "psychic histories" of San Francisco, where he still lives and writes today.

Reviews

[Mira · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the sort of novel where you only believe that this stuff could happen in San Francisco if you live in San Francisco. This might be less fiction that you think.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

A haunting and straight-forward tale of four characters living in the subtle, quiet aftermath of an armored car "robbery," Fogtown is essentially solid with an unfortunate habit of commiting too strongly to a simplistic and out-of-place low brow style. Almost every major character or location is introduced via a paragraph of uninteresting factoids; the closest comparison I could come up with was an atlas or encyclopedia, though even less interesting. (He was this. He was that. He did this and that. He was also this other. It's numbing. If that was the author's intention, kudos, I guess? But in the end, those passages were at best quickly forgotten.)

One other interesting stylistic point was the overabundance of San Francisco landmarks. I appreciate giving the story a sense of location, but I can honestly say there may not be a single page in the entire book that doesn't have three or four specific landmarks, and many have more than that. It feels intrusive and interrupts some of the flow of the book. The afore-mentioned "encyclopedia" sections at least presented information in a non-fiction, fact-based way, and the translation to character and world building doesn't work at all.

Strong characters, fairly interesting plot, very gripping with a quick pace. The addition of a larger maybe-its-ghosts-or-maybe-its-drugs-or-maybe-he's-crazy plot became an interesting way of tying multiple characters together, but in many ways the execution was lacking. The technique was used primarily in regards to Stiv, a loser with no life, occasionally tripping into a detailed fantasy about a probably-real convict and his probably-real sidekick, but the story also occasionally drifted into a similar "ghosts of San Francisco" concept that didn't contain the same narrative flow at all, though the actual content there was fairly interesting, if not uniform.

Individual sentences and conversations shine through as truly innovative and creative, a display of something incredible waiting to be tapped, but as soon as such gems make themselves apparent, they fade into the overwhelming sense of repetition and conformity of a straight-forward account instead of a character exploration. Actually, that's my main beef with the entire book - I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be a story about the characters, a story about the money affecting the characters, or a story about the city itself. Instead of being an amalgam of narratives, it feels like a schizophrenic recollection of knowledge being portrayed in a normal narrative sense. It comes off feeling... without a distinct voice, either as a whole or for any individual character.

[Denise Monegato · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was very impressed with the writing, especially considering Plate is self-taught and was himself a homeless man for many years while he wrote. Presents the seedy side of San Fransisco, specifically the residents of the Allen Hotel on Market Street, a residential flop house. Very descriptive imagery and well-drawn characters puts the reader in the novel, a novel that is both haunting in it's portrayal of the struggle of survival and occasionally miraculous glimmer of hope that saves some but not all.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An unflinching and often brutal view of San Francisco in the early aughts. The story revolves around 4 characters - one of whom comes upon a largesse of cash after a Brinks Truck crashes. The characters are all very much down and out - some living in an SRO hotel on the fringes of the Tenderloin. There's a very hallucinatory feel to the writing - particularly as the characters tend to be mentally unstable and/or under the influence (heavy influence) of various drugs. The plot never really holds together - lots of various strands, but the story is really more of a portrait of San Francisco from the perspective of those left behind the tech and economic boom. I think the story would have been just as powerful without the excessive violence - but just my opinion.

[Marc Leroux · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this book as part of the goodreads giveaway program. I can't say that I was really captured with the book. The plot is clever. A Brinks truck overturns, money spills out, and the lives of people who pick up the cash are changed.
I found that the story was a fast read, the pace was quick, but I found the characters to be bland. The plot was convoluted in places, and I had to go back an re-read certain passages, not out of interest in the writing, but because I couldn't follow what was going on later.
I'm sure that this book appeals to a certain audience .... I just couldn't find myself engaging with the characters.

[Pamela · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking forward to a novel about San Francisco, but not this one, it wasn't very pleasant. The hallucinations from one schizophrenic young character seemed like a strange tale within another, sort of a book within a book. Really it didn't fit in well at all. No, I didn't like the book too much. The book felt like it was trying to be a character study, but failed. Felt like it needed more pages to succeed as a character study. Actually was happy the book wasn't longer, and that it's off my shelves now.

[Tom Ferguson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gritty, real, descriptive. Plate paints the perfect Tenderloin / mid market down and out life. Iconic locations, emotional persona descriptions and empathy, loathing feelings for characters. Great read.

[Bonnie smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

i loved it. peter plate really captures what the city is really like.

[M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

On point at capturing the fatigue of low access/no access piss poor life. Really on point.

[kssndr · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a mess

[alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

More pavement genius from Mr. Plate.